Knee High Rails

SIGNIFICANT RISE IN MEADFLEET BILLS – How we could keep this extra cost as low as possible.

There are approximately 2km of wooden “knee high” rails around the site and many are beginning to rot and deteriorate. In 2020 Meadfleet estimated a cost to replace all of these at approximately £60k (plus their costs giving a total estimate of over £80k) over a 5-year period. This potentially equates to an additional ongoing charge per household of roughly £30 per year on top of Meadfleet’s current charges until completed.

The CCCA have secured an agreement with Redrow to remove sections of the rail free of charge so minimising the cost to our community. The estimate is that this is about half of the total rails on site. There will be an additional charge to our Meadfleet bills to us all which we cannot prevent completely, because some rails must be replaced, but we do have the chance to try and keep any extra charges to a minimum.

There are pros and cons to consider.

The main benefits are lower costs to the community and unsightly railings removed.

The main risks are:-

• potential parking on kerbs,

• damage to verges

• easier access through shrubs to the cycle path.

Not all of the rails can be removed and not replaced. There are certain areas such as around the children’s play area and along the cascade that will have to be replaced for safety reasons when they reach end of life (which is very soon).

In order for the Community Association to make a decision as to whether to take up Redrow's offer to remove the rails that provide no health and safety protection, we need to know the views of you, the residents on this. We have previously delivered a flyer to all households on this subject, but we had very few responses and unfortunately the pandemic prevented us from holding a public meeting in which this issue would have been discussed.

In order for us to gauge whether or not this is something residents are concerned about we need to hear your views. Please let us know your view by completing the survey below, comment on the facebook post or emailing us on cwmcalonca@gmail.com.

We need to hear from a significant number of residents in order to be able to select option 1 below and reduce the extra Meadfleet cost.

Failing this means we would unfortunately have to decline the Redrow offer and all residents would then incur additional Meadfleet costs in the future as per option 2.

The 2 options are

1. Allow Redrow to remove railings where there is no longer a need for a safety barrier, thus reducing the extra Meadfleet costs considerably. Barriers should remain around the cascade area, children’s play areas where safety is an issue, but removed where not needed (e.g. on streets such as Griffin, Phoenix etc.).

2. Leave rails as they are for Meadfleet to replace as necessary. The actual cost of this action will be for Meadfleet to determine and add to the bills of all residents. Please note that they have only given us estimated costs above, but potentially they could be higher.

Area Highlighted in yellow below is recommended for removal of Rails.